Clif Notes 1/21/19
50 Years Of Building The State & Now Global Workforce!
DATES TO REMEMBER
This Week -
Monday - MLK Day/Closed
Tuesday - PD Turn-Around Day/ No School for Students
- Horace Mann Presentations
Wednesday - 3rd Marking Period Begins
Thursday - Grades Due by 3pm
Friday - Steering Committee Mtg, 7:35 am C100
Upcoming:
1/29 - Small Group PLC
1/31 - Report Cards Delivered to Students
2/4 - PD Day
2/18 - Presidents' Day/CLOSED
2/22 - Interim Report Date
Student Loan Forgiveness Workshops
SAVE THE DATE
The Delcastle 50th Gala (Formal attire $50)
March 29th, 2019 (7 PM - 11 PM)
Tickets are on sale now. The link to purchase tickets is available on Schoology and the Delcastle website. Tickets are first come first served. Tickets are limited! Please plan accordingly. https://delcastlehighschool.ludus.com/
Ignite the Night 5K
April 5th, 2019
The 50th Celebration Car Show
May 4th, 2019
February 4th PD Preparation
There is still time to participate in the Secret Buddy Program!
The SECRET's out--Delcastle's Spirit Committee is ready to launch our 3rd Annual Secret Buddy program amongst the staff. Join in the fun and get to know a little bit more about your colleagues.
Fill out the Google questionnaire and submit it by the end of the day January 25th. Then, stop by Tina Horgan’s room (C107) by the end of the day January 31th to pick Your Secret Buddy. Start surprising your buddy the week of February 4th.
Budget $5 per month (1-2 little gifts) to surprise your Secret Buddy based on information given in their questionnaire or be creative and silly, just as long as you have fun with it!
The Secret Buddy reveal will be in June during the last days of school. The June budget will be $15, and will be shared on the day of the reveal.
Reach out to your Buddy as often as you like--not every contact need be extravagant, just covert (keeping in mind that it's your SECRET Buddy). Just make sure to reach out at least once per month and remember that it's the thought that counts!
Hoops for Hope
Sponsorship is $50. Please complete the attached form and submit with $50 in cash (no checks) at Delcastle to Dental Assisting teacher Ashley Dills or at Hodgson to Athletic Director Dave Collins. Questions? Contact Ashley.Dills@nccvt.k12.de.us
First Semester Mark Reporting and End-of-Course Reminders
Mark Reporting
Mark Reporting
All marking period, exam, final grades, and failure notices are due by 3:00 pm on January 24th
The electronic Failure notice is located on Schoology under “forms and documents”
Please submit senior failure notices ASAP
When you load your grades, the final course grade will not appear. Guidance will run final grade calculations every day at 7:00 am, 12:00 pm, and 4:00 pm
Parent contact must be made for any student who received a marking period or final grade of ‘D’ or ‘F’
Mark verification sheets will be in your mailbox on Friday, January 25th.
Verify, sign and return them to guidance by the end of the day on Monday, January 28th
Report cards will be delivered January 31st
If you have any questions regarding the grading procedures, please contact guidance
Make sure that your course is set up correctly for exams and semester grades. When the Report Card screen becomes available, click on the icon to access the columns for each of your courses.
Exams (midterms for full-year courses OR finals for semester courses) should NOT be entered as regular assessments. There is a column already created for the exam grade on the Report Card screen called EXM for final exams and MID for midterms, and the correct percentage has already been set. Important: If you do not see the correct columns for your specific course, contact guidance.
For year long courses, midterm exams are set at 10% and finals at 10%. For semester courses, final exams are set at 20%.
After you click on the Load from Gradebook icon to upload the marking period grades, manually put the exam grades and comments in the correct columns.
Do NOT put anything in the FIN column. That is where the final grade will show up once the averages are run by Guidance.
Attendance is automatically uploaded when Guidance runs the grade calculations. Teachers do not manually enter attendance numbers.
Remember to click on SAVE when working in the RC screen.
Second Semester
If you have new 2nd semester courses, remember to set up the categories and weights for all new courses. eSchool does not automatically set up your 2nd semester categories for you. (You CAN copy categories and/or assessments from one semester to the next through the COPY option.) ~ Kittel
Blue Tape
January Small Group PLC
Lingering Make-Up Work for 1st Semester in Schoology
The first semester has come to a close and the Schoology courses will be archived soon. Even though teachers will still be able to access these courses, the students will not.
This is problematic if a student still owes make-up work that is located in the archived Schoology course; however, there is a solution!!!
1. Put the student(s) into one of your 2nd Semester Schoology
courses. If you need help adding a student to your course,
click this link: https://goo.gl/Sps7NP
2. Copy the work that still needs to be completed from the
archived course into the current Schoology course where
you added the student. If you need help copying work from
an archived course into the new course, click this link:
3. Individually assign the make-up work to the student. If you
need help individually assigning activities, click this link:
As always, please contact me for additional assistance!!! ~Tara
Computer Usage at Delcastle for the Week Ending 1/18/19
Delcastle Instructional Focus
Talking in the classroom
Content-Area Conversations
by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and Carol Rothenberg
Chapter 1. Why Talk Is Important in Classrooms
Aldous Huxley (1958) once wrote, "Language has made possible man's progress from animality to civilization" (p. 167). In doing so, he effectively summarized the importance of language in humans' lives. It is through language that we are civilized. One could argue that nothing is more important to the human species than that. But Huxley wasn't done there; he continued by explaining the value of language:
Language, in other words, is how we think. It's how we process information and remember. It's our operating system. Vygotsky (1962) suggested that thinking develops into words in a number of phases, moving from imaging to inner speech to inner speaking to speech. Tracing this idea backward, speech—talk—is the representation of thinking. As such, it seems reasonable to suggest that classrooms should be filled with talk, given that we want them filled with thinking!
A Brief History of Classroom Talk
Academic discourse has always been part of the classroom. Teachers have long understood the importance of using language to transmit ideas. In the early history of education, teachers talked for most of the instructional day while students were quiet and completed their assigned tasks. Students were expected to memorize facts and be able to recite them. Remember that in most classrooms of the late 1800s, the age range was very diverse. In the same classroom, teachers might have students who were 5 or 6 years old and others who were 15 to 18. Talking by students was not the norm. In fact, students were punished for talking in class, even if the talk was academic!
Over time, educators realized that students had to use the language if they were to become better educated. As a result, well-intentioned educators called on individual students to respond to questions. Teachers expected them to use academic language in their individual responses, and as students spoke, teachers would assess their knowledge. Consider the following exchange from a 3rd grade class. As you read it, think about how much academic language was used:
Malik: Yes.
Teacher: What was the first stage in the life cycle? Jesse?
Jesse: They was born?
Teacher: Yes, things are born, but think about the life cycle of insects. Let's try to be more specific in our thinking. What is the first stage in the insect life cycle? Miriam?
Miriam: Eggs.
Teacher: Yes, insects start as eggs. Then they change and develop. They become larva after eggs, right? And then what? What happens to them after they are larva? Adrian?
Adrian: They are adults.
Teacher: They do eventually become adults, but there is a step missing. What is the step between larva and adults? What is that stage of the life cycle called? Joe?
Joe: Mature larva?
Teacher: Yes, there are two kinds of larva in the life cycle of some insects. But what I was thinking about was what happened to them after the larva before they become adults. Mariah?
Mariah: Nymph?
Teacher: Now we're talking about the three-stage cycle for some insects. Do the insects that change into nymphs come from larva? Let's look at our two posters again. Remember these? There is a three-stage process and a four-stage process. Let's study these again.
Let's spend a few minutes analyzing this classroom exchange. First, it's not unlike many of the whole-class interactions we've seen, especially in a classroom where the students are obviously having a difficult time with the content. One student at a time is talking while the others listen or ignore the class. Second, the teacher is clearly using a lot of academic languages, which is great. We know that teachers themselves have to use academic discourse if their students are ever going to have a chance to learn. Third, the balance of talk in this classroom is heavily weighted toward the teacher. If we count the number of words used, minus the student names, the teacher used 190 words, whereas the students used 11. This means that 94 percent of the words used in the classroom during this five-minute segment were spoken by the teacher. In addition, if we analyze the types of words used, half of the words spoken by the students were not academic in nature. That's not so great. Students need more time to talk, and this structure of asking them to do so one at a time will not significantly change the balance of talk in the classroom.
As you reflect on this excerpt from the classroom, consider whether you think that the students will ever become proficient in using the language. Our experience suggests that these students will fail to develop academic language and discourse simply because they aren't provided opportunities to use words. They are hearing words but are not using them. We are reminded of Bakhtin's (1981) realization: "The world in language is half someone else's. It becomes 'one's own' only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention" (pp. 293–294). In other words, if students aren't using the words, they aren't developing academic discourse. As a result, we often think we've done a remarkable job teaching students and then wonder why they aren't learning. The key is for students to talk with one another, in purposeful ways, using academic language. Let's explore the importance of talk as the foundation for literacy next.
Talk: Building the Foundation for Literacy
Wilkinson (1965) introduced the term oracy as a way for people to think about the role that oral language plays in literacy development, defining it as "the ability to express oneself coherently and to communicate freely with others by word of mouth." Wilkinson noted that the development of oracy would lead to increased skill in reading and writing as users of the language became increasingly proficient—as James Britton (1983) put it so eloquently, "Reading and writing float on a sea of talk" (p. 11).
Put simply, talk, or oracy, is the foundation of literacy. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. We have all observed that young children listen and speak well before they can read or write. Children learn to manipulate their environment with spoken words well before they learn to do so with written words. It seems that this pattern is developmental in nature and that our brains are wired for language. Young children learn that language is power and that they can use words to express their needs, wants, and desires.
The problem with applying this developmental approach to English language learners and language learning in the classroom is that our students don't have years to learn to speak before they need to write. Historically, teachers did not introduce English language learners to print until they had developed their speaking skills—a misguided approach that does not take into account the fact that, in developing their primary language, English language learners have already learned much about language, including the role that it plays in interacting with others. At the other end of the spectrum of instructional practice, many teachers did not provide any oral language instruction because they believed that their students needed to develop reading proficiency (and make adequate yearly progress) as soon as possible.
Instead of this either/or approach, English language learners need access to instruction that recognizes the symbiotic relationship among the four domains of language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Clearly, students must reach high levels of proficiency in reading and writing in order to be successful in school, at a university, and in virtually any career they may choose. We know that it takes time to reach those levels. We know that opportunities for students to talk in class also take time. So, given the little instructional time we have with them, how can we justify devoting a significant amount of that time to talk? We would argue, How can we not provide that time to talk? Telling students what you want them to know is certainly a faster way of addressing standards. But telling does not necessarily equate to learning. If indeed "reading and writing float on a sea of talk," then the time students spend engaged in academic conversations with their classmates is time well spent in developing not only oracy but precisely the high level of literacy that is our goal. In Chapter 3 we will explore how we can maximize use of instructional time to that end.
Continue reading next week....